Andrea Mitchell: Remember how Iran was sort of an ally after 9/11 until Bush’s “axis of evil” speech?

Allah:

Via the Free Beacon, I’m tempted to read this as a willfully devious attempt to re-write history so that even Iran’s history of terrorism is somehow the fault of the Bushitler. But no, I think she’s just being doofy.

The point she’s trying to make here, in her own doofy way, is that the U.S. and Iran had a few shared interests after 9/11. America was about to invade Afghanistan and smash a bunch of Sunni fundamentalists; the great Shiite power next door obviously had reason to keep an eye on the border as it happened, whether to stop fleeing refugees/jihadis or simply avoid pissing off a very angry, wounded superpower. Besides, we were already thinking of hopping across their other border and smashing their archenemy Saddam. Better to lie low and play nice for awhile to keep that plan on track, they must have thought. In reality, though, Iran was already sheltering top members of Al Qaeda by the time Bush delivered his “axis of evil” line. Years later, a federal judge would find that Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, helpedteach Al Qaeda the ropes in bomb-building during the 90s, which led directly to the 1998 embassy bombings. This fallacy, that Sunni and Shiite jihadbots would never collaborate on mutual goals, is a canard that’s been drifting around since 9/11 even though there’s nothing new about bitter ideological opponents forming mutually beneficial alliances. They eventually crack up, as we’re seeing right now in Syria, but they happen. To think that Iran was in any way an “ally” of the U.S. just because it wasn’t eager to get kicked in the teeth at a moment when we were busy settling scores in the region is bizarre.

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